For quite some time, people have been predicting that the internet would have a profound effect on the American political system, but these statements have always sounded more like wishful thinking than anything else. This week, the internet inserted itself twice into the race for President. The first was when a commercial slamming Hillary Clinton, a takeoff on the famous Apple 1984 ad, was released on YouTube, garnering millions of views. The second incident was yesterday, when the political news site Politico mistakenly broke the story that John Edwards was dropping out of the race for President. Many sites, including MSNBC, ran with it as news, but it turned out to be a false story, reports Techdirt this week.

The question is: Did/will any of these events have an impact on the campaign?

Not likely reports Techdirt.

The Hillary Clinton "1984" ad was only interesting as a testament to the fact that an individual can make a really cool looking ad; as a political ad, it's hard to imagine it having any impact at all. The Edwards event briefly showed how quickly the internet can propagate a false story, but that's not really news at all, and again, the actual political impact of a brief period when people had the wrong idea about John Edwards' political future will be virtually nil.

I can agree to that. But to imply that we are still waiting for internet's major impact on politics? What about ‘Macaca’, Lott, Rather, Dean etc? Don't moments like that count for anything?

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